A friend recently gave me a vintage 4C Maglite. It’s in OK shape, lots of nicks and things but no corrosion or dents. The rubber items were in the usual state: worn out or missing. I’ll replace all of the normal Maglite wear parts.
I’ve never had a C mag before, never liked the way they looked. Having one sitting around helped me warm up to the idea though! 4xAA or 4xC is a good setup for an XM-L2 on either DD (maybe?) or a linear driver. I plan on using a nanjg 105c. The trick is that the space for a heatsink and driver assembly in that C body is tiny! A cylinder of about 1in by 1in, so the heatsink might be 3/4in long at best (but realistically 1/2in long). With a heatsink like that I could kiss my dreams of 4-6amp drive currents goodby. Instead I decided it was high time to implement a monolithic heatsink and an electronic switch in place of the stock assembly. That’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while for Maglites and for the Defiant 51-LED (or was it 53? whatever) 4xAA lights, but hadn’t gotten that far.
I’m still a total neophyte on the lathe, so lots of this stuff took me several tries. The workpiece I started with was also a little short for the job at hand. Between having to chuck and re-chuck from every angle and the too-small workpiece there are jaw marks everywhere.
The ID of the body necks where a retaining ring would normally thread over the switch (eg the ID of the switch area is smaller than the ID of the area between the switch and the reflector). I haven’t started threading things yet, but of course I was forced to at least put the neck into my heatsink. The c mag body is so small that the button recess actually hangs down inside the tube, so I had to machine a big flat spot down the side. As I eventually got the thing shoehorned into the light I realized that I hadn’t left space for the wiring (or the switch boot). I refaced the flat in order to make space for the boot, but didn’t want to take enough off for the wiring. Instead I threw it on the tablesaw in the only position it would fit without falling through - a slight offset from the centerline. I cut a big enough slot for the biggest silicone jacketed wire we use (along with the e-switch wires).
After that I took a break, then drilled, countersunk, and tapped a 6-32 set screw hole to fix the assembly into the flashlight and establish ground/negative. I’m using a 6-32 grub screw I robbed out of the stock Mag switch assembly. The machining operation left to do is remove a bit of excess from the business end. I plan to epoxy the MCPB onto the end.
I used two pushblocks, one from the side to keep things lined up and one to push it through.
I use the table saw to cut 1” bar stock in 6061 and such. Have even used it to make one end of that 1” dia bar have a 1/2” diameter that will chuck into my -lathe -drill press. hahahahaha